Hi all,

I'm currently moving my main machine from a PC to a Mac.
Everything is ready to go, but I'm missing one vital component - my TV card.
I don't need to record. I simply want to view the TV that's coming in from our satellite box next door in the living room.
This is a composite video signal that comes through an RCA connector and the stereo audio comes in a stereo cable with a stereo headphone jack.

All very simple. I'm sure most people will just say buy an elgato usb tv dongle and job done. However:

Since I can hear the tv from the living room next door when it's on (often is, if my wife's watching in there I'm half working with a eye on the tv window on my pc) it has to be live with no delay in either audio or video.
The Hauppauge card I have at the moment works very well but I had to force disable the 1.5 second delay that the PVR software insists on using.
I never want to record, I just want to see and hear exactly the same as is on next door.

My local Mac shop has offered me the elgato hybrid usb, but I don't know if it comes with a delay, and the ADVC 55 external box which delivers the 'captured' content through firewire (same issue, no idea if it delays).

In either of these cases, I'd need a software window to view it in on my second monitor, and don't really want all sorts of controls - just a window, showing the composite signal that's coming in.

Help? Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Diz

I use an elgato eyeTV usb dongle on my Mac. It does everything I'd want a TV tuner to do, plus it does record stuff, which is handy
I got mine from Amazon, paid somewhere around £50 for the eyeTV DTT model.

HTH,
Ben

The ADVC55 will need to be feeding into some other piece of software, such as Final Cut or I guess iMovie. I'm uncertain whether QuickTime would also do it.
Best thing to do is see if you can get the shop to set one up next to a 'live' digi TV and see what's what - but a thought occurs to me that it might all be for nought.
We have two digi boxes, one in the lounge, one in the kitchen.
There is a definite delay between them - usually the kitchen is a little behind the lounge, yet they share the same aerial.
I'd say go with the Elgato dongle, the ADVC55 is a great little box for capturing footage to hard drive, which is exactly what you don't want to do! Using it just to monitor a TV feed; it's just not the right bit of kit for that. It'll do it, but the Elgato will do it better.